shayvaan wrote:As for implants being placed in adults- I don't recall this being ever even discussed. The closest thing was when someone (Cayleb, I believe) asked about using a NEAT to educate the inner circle, to which Merlin replied that one had to have implants to use the machine, but never explains why the inner circle couldn't receive implants.

Make of it what you will

P.S. If I had to guess, I would suspect that the surgery needed to do it SAFELY, would be beyond Owl's capability.

I'm guessing that a neural interface would take years to truly master. Implanting an adult should be possible. Most of them would probably never achieve the comfortable instinctive proficiency of children implanted shortly after birth but they would be able to use them ... eventually.

I wonder if Princess Alahnah was given the implants? Will the children of Sharleyan and Caleb, Irys and Hektor, and others in the Inner Circle, wind up being educated with the NEAT before the next series begins? That would be incredibly handy. They could even have a School of the Inner Circle where a select group of kids could absorb the knowledge of the Terran Federation. They might very well be facing a high tech onslaught more formidable than the church ever was, depending on what actually happens when the thousand years are up. The more people they can get who know everything, the better. And you don't really have to worry about someone rejecting the truth if they're exposed to it from an early age.

One thing you definitely want to do before any "Archangels" show up is make sure the truth is distributed too widely for them to squash without wiping out the whole population. That means you go public at least a year or two beforehand, preferably with a mass printed and distributed series of books detailing the whole of human history. There will be controversy yes. Some Safeholdians will accept the new revelations while others will condemn it as heresy and decide the old Grand Inquisitor was right all along! But you want to have skeptics everywhere who will notice when the Archangels screw up, or suffer setbacks, and see them for the frauds they are. The genie needs to be brought too far out of the bottle to be stuffed back inside - no matter what extremes they go to in the attempt.

How big are the implants? and are they connected via Bluetooth or does there need to be a physical connection like in the MATRIX movies? If invisible Bluetooth connection then all the kids should have gotten them at birth. but if a physical port is needed it would be hard to explain to the rest of the world.

mhicks wrote:How big are the implants? and are they connected via Bluetooth or does there need to be a physical connection like in the MATRIX movies? If invisible Bluetooth connection then all the kids should have gotten them at birth. but if a physical port is needed it would be hard to explain to the rest of the world.

I can't find the textev at the moment, but...

IIRC, Merlin muses that the required hardware for NEAT would be detectable by even a cursory examination by a Pasqualate healer.

On the other hand, both Merlin and Nimue have NEAT equivalent functions (high and low speed data transfer) which don't require a physical connection and aren't obvious "deformities."

OK, Totally different idea here. What if the Wylsynn's stone meeting up with the thing under the temple is a program to hijack the Platform into destroying ZION and the largest cathedrals in the land.

We know that Shuler got a bad wrap and was credited for writing the horrible book with his name. We have a few who believe he was dead before it was even written and it was written to save the other archangels face. But what if the Exe. files are a way to take over the platform and take out the church entirely or at least the largest groups of the population and help restart the whole thing over again.

The Exe. file would tell the Safehold the truth after near total inhalation of the population and tell them to be carful if they ever explore the cosmos. Maybe even give the people starting civilization over again the tools and computers needed to do it... "look behind door #3 a brand new replicator... and over here we have an encyclopedia database..." (said in an TV show announcer's voice)

Randomiser wrote:Sure, but they have custom designed internal body spaces and a fusion reactor to power whatever kind of communications you like. Kind of comparing apples with oranges.

The point isn't what Merlin and Nimue have, but what their links communicate with requires in the way of connections. Since they don't have any visible external ports, NEAT interfaces probably don't required visible external ports.

Randomiser wrote:Sure, but they have custom designed internal body spaces and a fusion reactor to power whatever kind of communications you like. Kind of comparing apples with oranges.

The point isn't what Merlin and Nimue have, but what their links communicate with requires in the way of connections. Since they don't have any visible external ports, NEAT interfaces probably don't required visible external ports.

My laptop doesn't have an external aerial either, but that doesn't mean you could put a wi-fi setup inside me! On top of that, we have all sorts ways of establishing Broadband connections in RL. The TF would be the same. The fact that the PICAs have technology which produces certain of the same results as a NEAT doesn't remotely imply they must be using the same kind of technology.

As you point out, the textev is that a NEAT would be detectable by even a cursory examination by a Pasqualate healer. Why hasn't yet been made clear, but RFC says it's so.

Randomiser wrote:Sure, but they have custom designed internal body spaces and a fusion reactor to power whatever kind of communications you like. Kind of comparing apples with oranges.

The point isn't what Merlin and Nimue have, but what their links communicate with requires in the way of connections. Since they don't have any visible external ports, NEAT interfaces probably don't required visible external ports.

They are not biological entities so they do not have NEATs they have radios and high and low speed data ports.

--A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

I thought it was a forgone conclusion that the key was the saved file / memory scan of an individual.

From the hints, I figured it was Khody- that he was briefed by schuler, uploaded, and chose to 'die' as he was one of the individuals that couldn't continue knowing there were two of him in existence (whether from the memory altering or the chosen mission).

Thus, like Nimue, Khody may have chosen to to come back in 1k years. Now where the body is or what, or whether or not it was a 10 day PICA, I don't know. I'd guess it was a full out unrestricted mode, otherwise the marine would have chosen to continue to live. 10 days isn't a lot of time to fix things.